Archive for December, 2009

CSS3 is full of cool new features. For example, last week we talked about CSS3 colors. In this post, I’d like to talk about some other cool features that CSS3 has to offer, and how you can access some of them now.

Looking back at the 2009 year, it is evident that JavaScript has played a big role in web design. Using libraries such as jQuery and MooTools, one can easily apply advanced effects with ease. Indeed, JavaScript is now present on almost every website.

With the rise of this new beast comes a few issues. The biggest libraries out there aren’t too small in terms of code size. Each one can add significantly to load time even when minified. Another problem resides with extra HTTP requests; each new file is accompanied by an extra request. Ultimately, this once again leads directly to a larger wait for users.

Merry Christmas! Today is the day to meet up with friends and family to celebrate and rejoice. Of course, you can’t forget about those great presents under the tree!

‘Tis the Season to Give

Because Christmas is all about giving, we wanted to share the love here as well. To thank the readers of Lateral Code, we will be giving away 25 Google Wave invites for free. Entry is simple and we hope many of you will win!

When we last left off, our site was equipped with a simple templating system. Of course, the benefits mentioned in part 1 are not yet achieved. That’s why our venture must continue to build the ideal template-focused site.

Issue: DRY Coding

In our main processing file, index.php, you may have noticed that we don’t yet follow the DRY (don’t repeat yourself) coding paradigm. That is, when we make multiple files, parts of the page such as our navigation, sidebar, header, and footer remain constant, but our pages reuse code. For example, consider the following unordered list navigation:

Traditionally, people using colors in CSS have dealt with either the hexadecimal format, which looks like this: #ABCDEF or the rgb format, which looks like this: rgb(171,205,239).

CSS3 comes with a few new ways of manipulating colors, such as using HSL (Hue, Saturation, Light) and opacity/alpha-channels. Unfortunately, only Firefox 3+, Opera 10+, Chrome 1.0+ and Safari 3+ and a few derivatives fully support these at the moment, but we make do with what we can, seeing as Internet Explorer doesn’t even start supporting CSS3 elements until Internet Explorer 9.